Even as Brown says he wants to “once and for all solve this problem,” he might not learn until November whether JEA agrees with his request for the city-owned utility to contribute $40 million a year toward a pension fix.

Brown also must restart talks with the police and firefighters in order to get pension changes that go beyond what the Police and Fire Pension Fund agreed to in Brown’s first attempt at pension reform. The City Council rejected it last year, saying it didn’t go far enough.

“This is about more than numbers,” he said. “It’s about quality of life. It’s about making sure we’re fair to the hard-working taxpayers and fair to the city employees. This is about the future of Jacksonville.”

His goal is to have a pension deal in hand by the time he proposes his 2014-15 budget in mid-July.

If Brown can get comprehensive pension reform enacted by the City Council by then, it would rival the four-month turnaround time that Atlanta achieved after a pension review panel unveiled alternatives there in 2011.

John Mellott, who was chairman of the Atlanta panel, said when financial rating agencies assess how cities take on pension reform, they base it on two criteria.

“They look to the financial capacity and they look to political will,” Mellott said. “Jacksonville clearly has financial capacity. Now, we’re going to see whether it has the political will.”

In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed “was the leader that brought all sides together,” Mellott said. Like Brown, Reed was in his first term.

“I think it showed an extreme amount of courage for the mayor of Atlanta to tackle the pension issue,” Mellott said. “It is the third rail of American politics.”

But there are some differences between Atlanta and Jacksonville.

The Atlanta review panel presented a “full range of options for the community to consider,” including tax increases and pension plan changes, Mellott said. But it didn’t recommend any particular approach.

Reed didn’t opt for a tax increase when he worked with the City Council on pension reform that passed unanimously.

But Jacksonville’s task force has concluded the city must boost its funding for the Police and Fire Pension Fund to truly fix the problem. In return for taxpayers accelerating funding, the “shared sacrifice” approach would entail current police and firefighters agreeing to pension benefit cuts.

“We’ve talked about comprehensive retirement reform, and it has to be comprehensive,” task force Chairman Bill Scheu said. “The strong feeling of the task force is that it’s all of a piece.”

The task force wants City Council to raise the property tax rate for the 2014-15 fiscal year, and then take advantage of a state law that lets cities use a sales tax for fire and rescue services that would replace the property tax increase the following year.

City Council would have to vote by Aug. 4 to tentatively increase the property tax rate, and then vote by the end of August to put the sales tax on the November ballot for voters to decide.

City Council members have said they wouldn’t even consider a tax increase if there isn’t movement by existing police and firefighters to pay more toward their retirement plans and accept smaller pension benefits.

“Is it possible?” City Council President Bill Gulliford said of reform getting done this summer. “Sure. Is it probable? I don’t know. We’ve really got to attack it.”

“I’m hopeful,” said City Council Finance Committee Chairman Greg Anderson, who hasn’t decided whether he’d support a tax increase. “But a lot of things have to fall in place in a hurry.”

Brown has repeatedly said he opposes any tax increases.

“My administration did not create the problem,” he said. “It inherited the problem. We are going to solve the problem. We’re stepping up to the plate as a community, all working together to solve it and not kick the can down the road.”

Brown said his team would work with JEA to accelerate the utility’s review of the pension proposal. He said he’d like that review finished “as soon as possible” but doesn’t have a specific target date.

Brown maintains JEA wouldn’t have to raise utility rates if it contributes the $40 million a year for a 14-year period. JEA officials are skeptical.

Part of Brown’s proposal involves JEA moving its employees out of the city’s general employee pension fund. That shift would enable JEA to directly negotiate pension benefits with its workers, enabling the utility to cut its own pension costs by roughly $500 million over 35 years, according to Brown’s proposal.

But the bulk of the savings would take place in the later years. JEA will hire its own actuarial firm to crunch the numbers. Under a timeline the JEA board’s audit and finance committee will discuss Monday, JEA won’t finish its assessment until November.

“I’d rather us err on taking a bit too long because the policy implications and the fiscal implications of our findings are going to be extraordinarily important,” JEA Board Chairman Mike Hightower said. “I want there to be no question of the process and modeling we used.”

While JEA is doing its review, Brown will reopen talks with police and firefighters about their pension plans.

The format of the next round of talks remains uncertain.

The talks would have to comply with a December order by Circuit Judge Waddell Wallace that found the city and the Police and Fire Pension Fund broke the state Sunshine Law when they negotiated pension benefits in non-public mediation sessions overseen by a federal court.

Times-Union Editor Frank Denton filed the lawsuit to ensure talks are open to the public. The city and the Police and Fire Pension Fund are appealing Wallace’s injunction. The fund argues it’s not a collective bargaining organization so Sunshine Law doesn’t apply to such talks.

Wallace’s order said the city and the fund might be able to go back into non-public talks in federal mediation if they inform a federal judge of the injunction and he still says federal rules require those sessions to be behind closed doors.

John Keane, executive director of the Police and Fire Pension Fund, said he’ll follow the advice of attorney on future meetings.

He said he’s ready to meet as often as it takes to get an agreement by summer.

“It hinges on cooperation, trust and understanding between all the parties,” he said. “Instead of meeting every other Monday, you meet every Monday, and if that’s not enough, you meet every Monday and Wednesday, and if that’s not enough, you meet every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The willingness to reach the objective dictates the time schedule.”

He noted the Police and Fire Pension Fund previously reached agreements with John Peyton when he was mayor and then with Brown last year. Neither agreement got enacted by City Council.

He said in the time since the City Council turned down the previous proposal, the issue has gained some fresh momentum from a study by the Jacksonville Civic Council and the months of meetings by the pension task force.

“Some of the things we agree with and others we have philosophical and legal issues about,” Keane said. “The fact that we’re moving and will be talking about it, that’s progress toward solving it.”

Um, nobody's waiting. In point of fact, and as was mentioned by Mr. Keane in the article, the PFPF has agreed twice previously to changes in benefits for new hires that would have saved the city $750 million and $1.2 billion over 30 years, respectively - ending the unfunded liability. But neither of those compromises were good enough for Gulliford and Crescimbeni. No, they want the current guys bleeding.

Well here's the deal, it's off to court we go folks. Let's go back to federal court where the federal settlement agreement / contract that the city drew up after they originally got caught absconding with the benefit monies of retirees was mediated. Let's just see what the magistrate has to say about the party that wrote the contract, the COJ, trying to get out of it, AFTER taking an additional $300 million from the fund to artificially lower the mileage rate and win votes.

In addition to Detroit's corruption, and the effects of crime on the city's overall financial problems should be added the complex, unusual, and difficult to understand "interest swap" schemes involving Detroit's pension funds and Wall Street. Wall Street maneuverings and manipulations reportedly played no small role in Detroit's pension problems.

Though not reported here, one of Jacksonville's own actuaries reportedly pointed out that "this is not Detroit".

Detroit created its position with the need for immediacy and the $11 billion "pension" debt solely because $7.5 billion of it wasn't pension debt at all. It was free health care for all it's employees while working and retired. The COJ provides no such benefit, as such while this problem needs to be addressed for sure, the total unfounded liability here does not need and shouldn't be addressed with anything other than a well thought out steady approach over time.

As for council representatives like Daddy's Boy Gulliford and John the Crusader Cremscimbeni wanting current employees to suffer and sacrifice more than paying their 8% every 2 weeks without fail their entire careers, and already agreeing twice to more than that - before they lift a finger to fix a problem the city itself created - it'd be comical if not so ludicrous. Especially when you consider Crescimbeni sat on that same council that signed off on borrowing over $300 million from the fund during the life of the 2030 contract, and now he wants others to pay his bill.